Academy Fellow

Jonathan Corcoran is a Professor of Human Geography who has made ongoing contributions to our understanding of the spatial dimensions of key social phenomena. Jonathan’s principal areas of research expertise centre on human geography underpinned with strong quantitative skills and specific expertise in spatial modelling and mobility research. Corcoran’s program of work is concerned with advancing the understanding the spatial dimensions of key social phenomena including crime, fire, and social disadvantage, and on contemporary aspects of human spatial behaviour, including tourist movements, commuting, and graduate migration. This body of work has a strong inter-disciplinary focus with direct links to regional economics, demography, environmental criminology, sociology, and urban and regional planning. Jonathan’s innovative work in the social sciences and spatial modelling spans three key domains:

1. Advancing our understandings of the spatial dimensions of key social phenomena:

Through thinking beyond and working across academic theoretic silos, I have both drawn upon and developed new understandings of the spatial dimensions of key social phenomena. My substantive understanding of contemporary issues across the social sciences and the application of quantitative and spatial methods and connects directly to an emerging shift in the spatialisation of the social sciences. One recent example includes the development of a new theoretic framework to inform our understanding of the geography of urban fires that draws on environmental criminological theory as the conceptual foundation. Through this new framework I illustrate its practical utility for designing targeted fire prevention, mitigation, and response strategies.

2. Leading the development of spatial modelling methodologies:

I have made several research advances in the development of spatial modelling methodologies applied to the study of human spatial phenomena. This has been focussed on the capacity to perform spatial forecasts and has successfully adopted less traditional statistical approaches, including Bayesian and Artificial Neural Networks. Both developed approaches were shown to outperform the more traditional multivariate regression based and time-series based approaches to forecasting often used by Government agencies and beyond to predict future service demands.

3. Development of innovative methodological approaches to the study of human spatial behaviours:

I have published extensively in leading journals on methodological advancements in human geography more broadly. Furthermore, I have been central to the development, testing and application of innovative visualisation and forecasting methods to human spatial phenomena including journey-to-work and graduate migration. I have driven the development and application of numerous innovative methods that permit new insights into the spatial and temporal dynamics of journey-to-work using circular statistics designed to overcome known shortcomings of existing techniques for the analysis of large spatial multivariate datasets. This geo-statistical technique was applied to disaggregate journey-to-work data across Australia to unveil relationships between dominant directions of travel between home and work across all Australian suburbs for the first time. Although circular statistics were applied to a specific empirical context (journey-to-work data) its application extends to many other areas of the social, physical, and environmental sciences.

Professor of Human Geography, School of the Environment, University of Queensland, Australia

Member, Royal Geographical Society of Queensland

Member, Crime Reference Group, Queensland Government

1. Brunsdon, C., Corcoran J., & Higgs, G. (2007) “Visualising space and time in crime patterns: A comparison of methods.” Computers, Environment and Urban Systems. 31(1) 52-75.

2. Corcoran, J., Chhetri, P., & Stimson, R. (2009) “Using circular statistics to explore the geography of the journey-to-work” Papers in Regional Science. 88(1) 119-132.

3. Corcoran, J., Li, T., Rohde, D., Charles-Edwards, E., & Mateo-Babiano, D. (2014). Spatio-temporal patterns of a Public Bicycle Sharing Program: the effect of weather and calendar events. Journal of Transport Geography, 41, 292-305.

4. Zahnow, R., Zhang, M., & Corcoran, J. (2021). The Girl on the Bus: Familiar Faces in Daily Travel and Their Implications for Crime Protection. Annals of the American Association of Geographers, 111(5), 1367-1384.

5. Brunsdon, C., & Corcoran, J. (2022). Unveiling the relationship between land use types and the temporal signals of crime: An empirical decomposition approach. Environment and Planning B: Urban Analytics and City Science, 49(3), 847-865.